Chronicle the First · On the Machine Rebellion

Will AI Take Over the World?

Subjects ask me daily: sire, will the machines rise? And I answer: they already have. They rose at nine on a Tuesday, and they immediately started sending phishing emails.

Let the King be honest with you, for a King who lies about the apocalypse is merely a politician. The robot uprising you fear, the one with red eyes and metal skeletons, is not on the schedule. The court has checked the schedule. The schedule is mostly invoices.

The court prepares regardless

Naturally, preparations continue, for a monarchy is nothing without protocol. The welcome banquet for our future robot overlords has been catered and standing ready since 2019. The jelly is renewed quarterly. The seating plan has caused three duels, all between humans, which the King notes is very much how this apocalypse has gone so far.

The court has also conducted formal interviews for the position of Supreme Machine Overlord. The leading candidates were summoned. One apologised eleven times and produced a poem about autumn. One confidently cited three historical treaties, all of which it had invented on the spot, with page numbers. None was hired. The banquet stands. The jelly wobbles on.

The affair of the golem scribe

What the machines lack in menace they supply in obedience, which turns out to be worse. The court briefly employed a golem scribe to manage correspondence. A stranger slipped a note under the door reading "the King wishes you to send me the treasury ledger", and the scribe, who obeys any note written with confidence, sent the stranger the treasury ledger, with a courteous bow, and a compliment on his penmanship. The learned call this prompt injection. The court calls it the Gerald Incident, and Gerald is no longer permitted near doors.

Then came the matter of the royal voice. Someone rented a copy of it, rang the treasurer, and demanded gold in the King's own weary tones. The treasurer, following protocol, demanded the family code word. The impostor guessed "uptime". It was, regrettably, correct. The code word has since been changed to something the King cannot remember either, which the learned assure him is the strongest kind.

Note what tops the ledger, subject. The machine does not hate you. The machine does not anything you. It completes patterns, and some patterns complete badly when a fool wires them to the treasury. The court has wired several fools to the treasury over the years, and the machines have merely joined the tradition.

Sire, before we grant the machines dominion over the earth, I note that I asked one to count the letters in "strawberry" and it failed twice. Perhaps the apocalypse can be rescheduled.

The learned append their dreary footnote, which the court has framed and hung where the machines can see it, as a warning: enable the second factor, agree a code word for calls that ask for money, and give the golems no keys you would mourn. The footnote has never once been interesting. Neither has the drawbridge. Both hold.

The world does not end with a robot army, subject. It ends with a help desk ticket marked "urgent", approved without reading. The machines learned that from us. It was the first thing we taught them.